SK hynix Says DDR5 is Coming Out This Year and Will Be Epic!

South Korean memory semiconductor supplier SK hynix is the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker and they have made interesting post about DDR5 memory in their newsroom. The post covers how DDR5 next-gen memory is superior to DDR4 that is used by most all PC platforms currently on the market. SK hynix will begin mass-production of DDR5 memory chips this year and said that it will be available to consumers “in the near future.” The switch over to DDR5 memory began years ago and is important since DDR5 can offer more than two times the bandwidth compared to DDR4. The number of CPU cores has dramatically increased in recent years thanks to AMD Ryzen processors, so being able to deliver higher memory throughput makes sense and should help improve performance on big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning workloads.

In the 4th Industrial Revolution, which is represented by 5G, autonomous vehicle, AI, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), big data, and other applications, DDR5 DRAM can be utilized for next-gen high performance computing (HPC) and AI-based data analysis, said Sungsoo Ryu, Head of DRAM Product Planning at SK hynix. DDR5 will also offer a wider range of density based on 16Gb and even 24Gb monolithic die, in order to meet the needs of cloud service customers. By supporting higher density and performance scalability compared to its predecessor, DDR5 has set a firm foothold to lead the era of big data and AI. With this, SK hynix will secure a competitive edge in the premium server market while providing distinguished memory solutions to customers.

As you can see from the DDR5 specifications table below, SK hynix indicates that JEDEC speeds for DDR5 memory modules will range in speed from DDR5-3200 all the way up to DDR5-8400! The new 16Gb DDR5 SK hynix DRAM has been tested at a data transfer rate of 5200Mbps and they found that it can process 41.6GB (Gigabytes) of data11 full-HD video files (3.7GB each)per second. One of the other interesting things about DDR5 memory is that it will help PCs become more efficient as it has an operating voltage of 1.1V. This is a reduction of over 20% compared to DDR4s 1.2V operating voltage.

The other slide that was used in the post covered the advantages of DDR5 memory where it lists power consumption, speed, reliability and performance as being highlight areas. DDR5 adoption should begin in late 2020 and is expected to account for 22% of the total DRAM market as soon as 2021!